Reinventing the Millennium

LG is the third mobile phone manufacturer to launch mature capacitive screen mobile phones after Apple and Yike.

It relies on the upgraded Symbian system that supports full touch screen, adheres to the low-price strategy and differentiated competition, and follows the cooperation mechanism between Apple and AT\u0026T, Yike and T-mobile, and has initially achieved good results in the US market.

Regardless of whether this is a temporary taste or whether it can really continue the momentum, Apple can no longer tolerate the emergence of another Symbian version of Yike, so it does not consider waiting for the other party's products to become stronger before taking a big bite of patent fat, but tries to start from Stifle right from the start.

After Fang Zhuo agreed in principle to Schmidt's request, he quickly saw Apple's more detailed litigation information.

The three patent infringements it filed are all patents that can be applied to mobile devices. Two of the patent numbers 5946647 and 6343263 can be traced back to 1994. The former "involves a system required to run an instruction in data generated by a computer and Means", which is "a real-time signal processing system for data transmitted in a continuous manner".

In addition to Apple's touch patents, they are relatively conceptually broad patents.

Like 5946647, according to the description, using your fingers to interact and send emails on LG's touch phone will basically infringe the patent.

Fang Zhuo doesn't know whether Apple's lawsuit will be successful. He plans to let the company add fuel to the fire to this patent dispute after April.

The current patent situation of Yike is that it has cross-licensed with Samsung, which is willing to carry the Android system, cross-licensed with Apple, which is wary of European patent litigation, and packaged patents from Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

However, the more embarrassing thing is that these authorizations are unilaterally issued by Yike, and the PRO alliance established with Google for the Android camp has not benefited from this.

Generally speaking, the biggest threat to the patent field of Yike mobile phones for a period of time is Nokia, the current dominant player in the mobile phone industry.

Whether it is the company's internal evaluation or Fang Zhuo's roundabout way of thinking, we have to admit that Nokia's patented weapon hidden in the sheath is difficult to deal with, so we can only work hard to increase mobile phone sales and gain more trade-offs. chips.

In the last week of March, Fang Zhuo had almost postponed his schedule for nearly a month. One thing after another seemed to be rushing towards him. Following Tesco’s preparations for June 18th, the head of Morningstar Semiconductor People and senior officials came all the way from Hsinchu, the treasure island.

Fang Zhuo warmly received the group.

We are actually our own people.

The TV chip field that Morningstar has developed to this day started from Changhong and then spread to the entire mainland market. Fang Zhuo helped a lot in this process and also took some shares with this investment. In addition to the financing that Morningstar expressed in Silicon Valley before, he is now It holds 8.7% of the shares.

In addition, IDG and Shenxin Technology, which participated in the financing, also hold a total of 6% of the shares.

With this 14.7% stake, coupled with business contacts and cooperation prospects, Fang Zhuo is a shareholder with considerable influence on Morningstar.

That's why, this time, the boss and the top management came together to express the necessity of listing in Hong Kong instead of the mainland from various angles and considerations.

Fang Zhuo gave him full understanding, and also looked forward to and supervised Morningstar’s work in chip design.

Both parties are quite satisfied with this communication. Morningstar Semiconductor will officially start the work of going public in Hong Kong in the coming April.

In addition, Fang Zhuo also talked about Yike Mobile’s possible plans.

This year, Yike will definitely not launch an entry-level Android phone. Overseas, it will rely on the new phone released in June to dominate the world and continue to increase its market share. In China, the new and old generations of phones will occupy different market segments.

In this way, Yike's entry-level machine will have more time to polish, which also means that Morningstar Semiconductor, which has frequently failed to tape out, still has time.

At the same time, as a shareholder of Morningstar, Fang Zhuo is also kind and helpful. He can recommend domestic mobile phone manufacturers that may be equipped with Android systems for Morningstar’s mobile phone chips. In this case, no matter when Yike launches a mobile phone, as long as Morningstar succeeds, it will not waste time.

——Understand the launch requirements, set aside time for design, and recommend domestic manufacturers.

Fang Zhuo feels that he has done a good job and is just waiting for Morningstar to successfully launch and develop results.

On the last day of March, the iPhone is about to go on sale. Yike also received an assessment of the sales of LG's new phone, believing that LG's sales this month may be between 300,000 and 400,000 units, which seems to be a good result.

However, considering that the reputation is not particularly good, the company boldly judged that it will not be easy for LG to maintain this trend in the future.

Fang Zhuo also has a similar view. He has an actual LG machine in his hand. After two days of repeated trials, he can only say that the Symbian system's support for touch screens is worse than expected.

That evening, just as Fang Zhuo was confirming his itinerary with the United States, Bingxin's shareholder Zhang Hongli of Deutsche Bank, who had also invested in ICBC, called and discussed a somewhat unexpected matter.

The ice core investment that he personally went to Germany to inspect before but could not reach an agreement at all has turned around. Deutsche Bank is willing to bear part of the investment and loans to promote the construction of a new ice core factory in Germany.

Zhang Hongli acted as a middleman to convey changes from Germany.

"Mr. Zhang, this surprises me. The ice core has almost given up on the idea of ​​building a factory in Germany. Mr. Qiu is very opposed to it. I respect their opinion." Fang Zhuo can roughly guess the reason for the change, which is nothing more than The Wall Street crisis is gradually getting worse.

"Mr. Fang, you said something like this to me, and I know your respect, but I think this is a good opportunity. The German government is considering new public construction policies to stimulate the economy and is also actively introducing investment. "Zhang Hongli felt that Fang was always playing tricks, "That is to say, Deutsche Bank is a shareholder of Bingxin. At this point in time, the investment intensity can be discussed."

"I may have to go to the United States first. This matter is not a trivial matter. I have to think about it carefully." Fang Zhuo said seriously.

In fact, there was a political factor in the previous postponement of the construction of factories in Germany. Ice Core does not build factories wherever it wants, but must consider domestic opinions. Merkel's actions last year brought the relationship between the two sides to a freezing point.

By March of this year, relations between the two sides have picked up. At least the scale of economic and trade has been further expanded. Presumably with the outbreak of the financial crisis, there will be further cooperation in both relations and economy.

Fang Zhuo didn't want to get involved in politics, but now Bingxin's big move has to respect the gameplay of this factor.

Because of the appearance of Zhang Hongli of Deutsche Bank and the important planning involving the ice core, the trip was postponed again.

Fang Zhuo thought about it and considered a more appropriate method.

On the second day of April, he approached the leaders of the Shanghai Federation of Industry and Commerce and wanted to promote the formation of a Yangtze River Delta business resource docking association, and planned to organize a wave of study visits to Europe by the end of the year.

I’m exhausted from working overtime continuously, so I’m looking for a code wording state on the weekends.